Just posted an article on the NTDebugging blog about ICorDebugUnmanagedCallback::DebugEvent. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ntdebugging/archive/2011/11/29/fixing-an-icordebugunmanagedcallback-induced-hang.aspx

Today I wanted to find out what the Debugger Engine (DbgEng) changes are between Windows 7 and the Windows 8 Developer Preview. To get the differences, I did a WinDiff between the SDK 7.1 ‘DbgEng.h’ header file and the new version (C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.0\Debuggers\x64\sdk\inc) shipped with the Windows 8 Developer Preview’s WDK (en_windows_developer_preview_wdk_x86_x64_741966.zip). By…

To cut a long story short, if you install SQL Server 2008 R2 via ISO mount in Virtual PC, the install will fail with a Database Engine Handle error. To get out of this issue: Uninstall everything to do with SQL Server (from Programs and Features) Extract the ISO to a folder using WinRAR (do…

For some unfathomable reason, there seems to be no simple chart cross referencing the common CPU names, their basic features, and the internal CPU information identification (provided by !cpuid and !sysinfo cpuinfo). (There is also no clear description as to why !sysinfo cpuinfo doesn’t match !sysinfo cpumicrocode, but that’s a chart that’ll have to wait.)…

For a long time now I’ve had a registry file to make context menu entries for WinDbg. The entries allow you to select the x86 or x64 debugger. Internally at Microsoft, I have another version of the registry file that contains two more context menu entries for the private symbol server. You can see all…

ProcDump v3.04 has been released. The release just contains a tiny (edge case) sanity check I wrote in the MiniPlus stack traversal code. Specifically, it caters for the case where esp/rsp is not within the stack base and stack limit. In this highly unlikely scenario, ProcDump -mp now iterates between the stack limit and the…

These David Solomon talks on Memory Management (circa 2005) used to be on TechNet Spotlight but got pulled last year. I’ve found a repost of them here: http://www.opsvault.com/david-solomon-technet-talks/

I’ve written a three part series in MSDN Magazine that covers the Debugging API (specifically, DbgEng). Writing a Debugging Tools for Windows Extension – Part 1 – March 2011 Covers the build environment and the basics of Output, reading Memory and reading Registers Web: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/gg650659.aspxPDF: http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/D/4/4D40CAFF-528D-4AAF-80AA-2DD524A22BD2/MSDN_0311DG.pdf Writing a Debugging Tools for Windows Extension…